Silica Gel as a Sorbent and Catalyst Support: the Improvement of Technologies and the Search for Alternative Production Routes

Abstract

Silica gels are the porous materials widely employed in both the industry and housekeeping. Domestic manufacturers produce bead and powder silica gels; however, some application fields of silica gels completely depend on the import. So it is necessary to develop technologies for their production, the introduction of which would allow replacing the imported silica gels. The paper describes methods for improving the properties of bead silica gels and new approaches to the production of powder silica gels and silica gels with the ordered pore structure. It was proposed to use inexpensive feedstock for their preparation, particularly, industrial wastes from the production of alumina – Si-stoff, and the natural material – diatomite. By controlling the parameters of deposition and formation of the silica structure it is possible to obtain silica gels with a wide range of pore structure characteristics, which could be used in various application fields.